Luck's No Lady
by truhekili
Summary: Starts a few days after the season 6 finale, after Alex wakes up from his surgery. What's next for him and Teddy? One shot. Complete. Standard disclaimers: I do not own these characters and make no profits from this story. Alex/Teddy.


How he ends up in your bed is impossible to describe without you sounding suspiciously like that mad French woman on "Lost."

He's gasping the first time you see him semi-awake after his last surgery, flailing and trembling violently and he's going to suffocate himself if he doesn't calm the hell down.

There aren't enough nurses and you know he's no soldier but you've done this before and you just ignore how the room comes to a startled halt when you slap him and scream his name, slamming the oxygen mask back on him before he pulls his stitches out entirely.

He's sedated while you examine and re-pack the wound and you tell him he was very lucky -when you really want to strap him to the bed if that's what it takes- once you catch that glimmer in his eye, amid the searing pain and the raw terror and a desperate plea.

You've seen that before, too, from your guys in the field, calling for their mothers and apologizing to their gods because their apocalypse is now and they all become true believers in something – in valor or love or duty or loyalty or victory - when they're inches from kingdom come.

He pushes your hands away, more weakly this time, until one of the nurses grabs his arms, and Lexi Grey tries to calm him between her own sobbing gasps and you really want her out of the room, because, honestly, she's just not cut out for this, any of it.

He fights you more over the next few weeks, first to walk, then to leave the hospital when he's still paler then most corpses, and he wants the stitches out much too early - as if you just put them in to be decorative - and he rolls his eyes when you tell him bluntly it'll be a year before he fully recovers from the blood loss.

He badgers you about work the following month and you reluctantly agree that he can return part time - though he's not ready, really - and you notice the Weepy Grey is now kissing Sloan and flashing a new ring, while Karev sticks very close to her sister and Yang, which makes you wonder, since threesomes seem to be all the rage in this hoar house turned hospital, and you've heard Yang call him Evil Spawn.

He returns regularly over the next few weeks for his post-op appointments - keeping his part of the deal - and you ask if he's sleeping and how he's eating and he smirks in a way that makes you doubt he's doing either and he just blows you off with that glimmer, like he does the following week, when you offer him second assist on a valve replacement.

You get that he has to dismiss you, because guys like him don't appreciate having your handy work sewn into their chests, and always expect to be the ones doing the saving, and would never see your offer as anything but charity. Still, it pisses you off when he snickers about doing something more hard core, since that's Cardio he's disrespecting.

You find him at Joe's later that evening and loudly challenge him to a darts match. You know it's not fair since you're a master and he's still stiff and weak, but you know he'd never resist a public test and you beat him soundly and demand that he pay up.

He grumbles and gets you the drink you've won, raising his eye brows at your choice of vodka neat, and one drink leads to a second and you'd love to say you were anything but cold sober afterwards when he pinned you to your bed - and you'll always insist it was his doing because guys like him just can't lose - but that's fiction.

You're just scratching an itch – and you're still pissed at Owen, and Karev may still be into Weepy Grey, since guys like him love girls that always need coddling - but he's back the next night and he's still trying too hard to prove something - to himself mostly, you're sure, though he probably thinks its to you - and mostly you remember that he leaves his tee shirt on the whole time, green, you think it was, or maybe dark blue.

They warned you in Basic about colleagues with heightened stress and emotions running high and close calls with death and you see it all around you, the blank faces that haunt the hospital, but you've seen this before, too, guys who act like nothing happened, until they turn the guns on themselves, and you almost wonder if he might be one of those.

You know he avoids elevators like the plague – building endurance, he insists, whenever you inquire while taking the stairs with him - and he probably even believes that his stair taking has everything to do with regaining aerobic capacity and nothing to do with where they found him - and you still doubt he's sleeping, and the tee shirt thing is still weird, but you do admit later the next week that the endurance building is definitely working.

He's even more energetic by the fourth week and he doesn't seem to mind you on top as long as you earn it and it's almost like a wrestling match and a battle to see who caves first but it all ends with both of you gasping and trembling and utterly spent.

He never stays over the first few weeks, and you almost say something because he's still too weak for this despite the bravado and he's groggy and almost stumbling when he leaves and you wonder if he'll fall asleep on his way home. But you get that this is your place and you're an Attending and he still has something to prove to himself and it's just how this game is played and however he became an Evil Spawn he does play fair.

It's the eighth week that's the problem, since it's three am and he's still lying beside you and you won't wake him because he's back to work almost full time, though you still think it's too soon, and you're just relieved to see that he can actually sleep, though the tee shirt thing is rapidly going from ego-protecting fetish to just plain silly.

He's startled when he wakes hours later – almost as startled as you were, probably - and he's grimacing at your lavender shampoo and he keeps turning away in the shower and grabbing for a towel, as if you haven't seen your surgical handy work dozens of times.

You test his limits the following week, as he reaches for the soap. He shoves your hands away and you think it's a reflex, since you've still never touched him anywhere near that scar, not outside of the hospital, anyway. But then he's pinning your arms over your head and brushing his stubble over your cheek and whispering a husky growl into your ear - through a dripping, sudsy smirk - to keep your hands to yourself.

He stays most nights after that and small bundles of clothes gather like falling leaves in your condo and you start asking questions – though not of him – spreading feelers out along the grape vine, about the blonde ex-wife and the blondish ex-girl friend and the blondish best friend and the long-haired brunette rumor has it attempted suicide over him

You try to be discrete, until he kisses you casually in the lunch room, where Owen gapes and Yang's jaw drops and both Grey's eyes bug out – you wonder if that's a family trait – and you imagine you've just planted a whole new bush in the SGH-MW vineyard.

He stays more nights, and you learn over the next few months that he hates pickles and loves to play pool, that he hates chatty newswoman and loves microbrews, that he hates malls and movie theaters – too claustrophobic, he says, but loves tightly packed bars, that he hates Plastics, but loves Neuro and Ortho and anything hard core, and anything but Peads, he insists, no matter what Bailey says.

You learn that he watches Nickelodeon, and anything about sea monsters, and prefers cold weather, and sketches out surgical procedures as he learns them, and sends small cryptic packages to Iowa, and thinks your CD collection has too much jazz, and that you should do something about all the boxes of books you still have stacked in every room.

You push him more about elevators, and tease him about the tee shirt wearing in bed which now borders on ridiculous. The tee shirts go, awkwardly but quietly, but then the bedroom stays dark – except for the sky light, of course, which he peers at suspiciously some nights when he's sure you're not looking – and you still take the stairs with him.

You listen as he wages war with your plump black cat, whose name is Karma, but who he calls "freaking fatso over there," and you laugh hysterically when he finally hisses back, glaring at her milky green eyes and spiky arched back as she wags her lush tail disapprovingly in his direction. You tell him you named her Karma because she's good luck, and inform him bluntly that should push come to shove, you're siding with her.

That's what you like about cats; they're discriminating, and always let you know where you stand. You miss that, since you were wrong about Owen, and wrong about your job. It was easier in the military, where you wore your rank on your uniform, and always knew where you'd be.

You smirk at the thought, since he loves your old dog tags, and you think they turn him on, since they end up clasped in his teeth whenever you wear them, hung slightly lower then regulation. You'd offer to get him a fake set, but he's no soldier, and you still wonder where Evil Spawn came from, not that you don't see Yang's point completely.

She's frosty these days, though, and you have no idea if that's about Owen or surgical assignments or even Karev. But you know she's in over her head, since Owen is still Owen, or will be eventually, and Yang's no Beth, no bubbly bleached blond who bakes and teaches Sunday school and wants a mob of kids.

He stays practically every night now, and you notice over the next few months that he usually listens when you talk, even when he rolls his eyes, and he's deadly competitive - even about teeth brushing - and you get back through the grape vine that he praises your work, and he doesn't spook easy when you hear from old friends about guys who won't come home - and remind him that everyone in the Army is a soldier.

That seems to turn him on, too – that you take pride in what you were – but then the battle flares again over whether Cardio is hard core enough and there's snarking and mutual mocking and possibly hissing and mentions of all the time he spends on Peads and fuming face reddening and you're back in Joe's bar for another vicious darts match that culminates in raucous cheering and betting among the patrons and spilled beer.

You notice while he retrieves two more bottles that he's still like your guys, though, and he's no soldier but he's still coming back from where they did, and you've never heard the story from him, about the bloody path to the elevator or the doctor whose head was blown off in front of him, and you're sure he sleeps fine because he's generally beside you, but you wonder if he's always had to work or play so hard just to doze off.

You wonder about that again later that night when you reach tentatively across your bed, brushing your fingers across his back. He doesn't flinch, and he just murmurs as you move closer, but you keep your unspoken promise not to touch him anywhere near the scar and you wonder if his reticence has less to do with vanity or resenting your handy-work because it's yours, then with pretending nothing happened in the first place.

You remind yourself that guys like him will never forgive you, really – not for gutting them like pigs, but for pulling the bullets out before they can do it for themselves - and you think you've got him pegged this time, except that he always defends Grey and even Yang, and all three of them follow Miranda Bailey around like ducklings, and he assures you that you can trust the Chief, and it finally occurs to you while you're watching Nova the following evening that this must be how wolf packs form.

You get notice a month later about putting in requests for vacation time and you mention casually that you miss New York sometimes and are sick of Seattle's weather and would like to visit. He tells you that New York is over-crowded and probably hot as hell in the summer, but he'll feed freaking fatso once a week while you're gone.

You roll your eyes and you're already back in your office when you remember that he'd never have the money for a trip like that and would never let you pay – since he's Fred Flintstone in scrubs about these things, something you learned from the grumbling you got the first time you bought Fruit Loops for him - three days before pay day.

You remind yourself that you're an Attending and he's a Resident, and this is the only medical facility on the planet where students and teachers pair off like animals on Noah's Ark, and there are probably unwritten rules for dealing with Residents who've been out on leave and aren't making much money to begin with and who get cranky when they don't begin their days with enough sugar to wire an entire elementary school.

You shove the vacation idea aside after that, because you get busy and a new intern class comes in mid year and you notice that they're jittery. You're sure they wonder if they're taking the places of people who died, since you'd seen that look before, too, whenever new infantry units rotated in - though with them there was no question, really.

He frowns at your new plan for all the unpacked boxes of books he still grumbles about, building floor to ceiling shelves along two long walls in the second bedroom, flanking the twelve foot windows and the fire place. But he just can't help himself - because the road to modern manhood runs straight through Home Depot, apparently, and he's drilling and measuring along side you by the next evening.

That lasts for a week before he's muttering about library branches and electronic readers and you're detailing the relative merits of reading actual books - versus doctors believing in sea monsters - and there's snarking and squawking and clothes start to scatter and tape measures tumble and Karma scrambles up to one of the top shelves with a feral howl and windows rattle – maybe even the sky light – and he'll groan first this time if it kills you.

You almost defile the silky blue Oriental rug that your grandmother gave you, - though you suspect she'd just chortle, since she was like one of those mad French women - and he's still gasping wide-eyed on the floor beside you an hour later – collapsed between a wrinkled sheet of IKEA instructions and three plastic baggies of T-bolts and wing nuts – while you remind him casually that you've always seen libraries as multi-purpose rooms.

He's still driving you crazy, though, with his scribbled notes on the fridge, as if you can't remember to handle your own car maintenance, as if you're one of those ditzy blondes who just bubbles over and bats her eye lashes and waits for some dragon-slayer wanna-be with a socket wrench and a tool box to change a tire for her.

You cook, he cleans, and it's been nine months, and he's oblivious to spots on your drinking glasses, but obsessive about cat hair, and mixes recyclables together despite the crystal clear guide lines - and three increasingly stern warnings - from your tree hugging condo association, and he plainly has some firm principles about the division of labor, though you're not sure what they are exactly, except that cat care is obviously your job.

He still seems surprised that you can cook, and you're still baffled that he prefers his vegetables not to touch his other food, but he eats whatever you put in front of him, and you wonder if he's just a food is food guy or if there's more to it.

You skirt the ex-wife thing once or twice, since her name still comes up on the grapevine on occasion, but he just mutters that her survival was sheer luck, and that they've both moved on. He never elaborates, and you go back to pushing him on elevator avoidance, which prompts yet more sarcastic commentary about the importance of lung capacity.

You wonder if there's more to the ex-wife story, though, since from what you've heard that short marriage must have been a powder keg. You wince at the cancer part, and you still wonder if he's the rescuing type, but you'd already pegged him as a lingerie guy, too, and he still smirks that he likes you best in your dog tags – only your dog tags.

You point out that that makes him the real dog – and that you're obviously more of a cat person – and he just rolls his eyes at you while casually brushing an imaginary cat hair from your sweater, before peeling it off entirely.

You still refuse to shiver and shudder under his hands like some pathetic Victorian maiden over come by the vapors, though, and he still refuses to cave first, even when you've got him pinned and groaning your name, and it still sends the bedding flying and the cat running and leaves you both drowsy and trembling and possibly dehydrated.

Its all about who out-lasts who, you smirk, as he drifts off lazily under your fingers – not that you're one of those drippy women who'd watch him sleep, or eavesdrop on his quiet murmurs - though you might point out to him smugly afterwards that you can make him purr louder then the cat he hates, even when you're scarcely lifting a finger.

Three weeks later, you return home from performing a surgery prompted by a shooting in a mall restaurant, and you're relieved - for a change - to be away from the hospital. You get that it's a grim reminder to the personnel, especially with the first anniversary of the SHG-MW shootings approaching. But you've already dug too many bullets out of too many guys to ever forget that the next shooter can always be just around the next corner.

It's already been eleven months though, you remember, as you push the door open, and you expect him to be on the couch watching a cheesy sci-fi movie and squabbling with the cat for seating rights, until you see the time and realize he'd have gone to bed hours ago. You notice as you stop by the kitchen that he's already fed Karma and cleared away the recycling and left a scrawled reminder about an oil change on the counter.

That still drives you crazy, and you almost laugh when you enter your darkened bed room, and see Karma sprawled peacefully beside him, and you almost avert your eyes in the shadowy moonlight as you pass to the bathroom, because naked always looks too naked on him when he's curled to his left like that, and you can glimpse your familiar handy work that's still off limits to touching or talking, and brands him as one of them.

You got some of the story from rumor and some from gory police photos, and you know there's no reason whatsoever why he's alive, except maybe for dumb luck, and dealing with survivors was never your job, and it was always easier to patch up the bodies in the field - since terror and adrenaline was a powerful brew – then to watch what came after.

You drop your clothes in the hamper, brush your teeth, and crawl in beside him, lightly tracing your fingers along his torso, almost skirting the unspoken rule you'd agreed to from the beginning. You're tempted to pull a blanket around him, to conceal him from the purring cat and the streaming moonlight and the prying gaze of the alarm clock.

A year, you'd told him; it would take him a year to recover from that much blood loss, even if he took the stairs until his legs shook and lifted weights until he hurled and beat every schedule to prove that he was fine and that nothing had changed and that he hadn't needed any of it: the oxygen, the vent, the transfusions, the meds, the medical leave you mandated, the follow-up appointments, the mandatory clearance from Dr. Wyatt.

You could have told him he'd been fooling himself, that it'd be a year no matter what he did, before his body healed enough to let the rest of him catch up. But you know guys like him never listen, that it's all about power and control and who's on top and who's stronger and never caving. You know that's why they'll even forgive the shooters, before they'll ever begin to forgive the sewers.

You toss and turn, and you're up before seven the next morning, and he watches a movie hours later with Karma curled beside him while you read your New York Times book reviews and wonder why the theme of the week's selections isn't smart people making stupid choices, since that's the story of your life – dumb luck and stupid choices.

You mention to him abruptly – without even waiting for a commercial - that one of your friends died on nine eleven and that's why you joined the Army and you'd never planned to end up in Seattle and you hate the weather and you really want to visit New York.

He looks up, vaguely bewildered - since he knows all that already, anyway - and you realize you left out the parts about missing your family, and why you get so irate when Memorial Day ads hawk cars and pools and luggage, and why you hate weepy women at military funerals who clutch shredded tissues while neatly folded flags are placed in their laps, as if it's a big shock that soldiers die young and violently, when their luck runs out.

He knows nothing about that, you remind yourself – about why it's dumb luck that you survived when your friends didn't, just like he did - and you wonder if it's as obvious to him as it is to you that luck can desert you at any moment - and you wonder if he can hear your silent plea for him to return his key to your place – before this gets serious.

There's still no returned key that evening, though - though you've learned over the course of the day that he's never been east of Iowa, but wouldn't mind seeing that Liberty chick, and maybe the Empire State Building, and he knows there's a memorial wall in the park down town, along a reservoir where he used to jog, and he planned to be a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills once – but you'd better not blab the Beverly Hills part to Yang.

It comes out in dribs and drabs, as usual, wedged in between lunch and dinner and weight lifting and his on-going battle to complete the last of your floor to ceiling shelving units from IKEA – which he swears is Swedish for Rubik's Cube – and you're sure he's missed the point entirely by then, and he's already snoring softly with Karma stretched along side him, perched like a sentry, fluffy tail astir, when you enter your bedroom.

They unnerve you as you undress, her milky green eyes, shimmering in the darkness, and you recall that felines, like luck, can be fickle, and you wonder if he even notices that she usually sleeps right beside him these days, purring to the same steady rhythm as his deep, even breathing, until you can scarcely tell them apart, even when you listen closely.

She must be one of those French cats, you think, as you crawl into the bed with a smirk, flighty and feminine, the kind who marks her territory with bloody claws, the kind you could picture streaking across a full moon on a broom stick, or prowling around a boiling cauldron, the kind that might even claim an Evil Spawn, you think wryly, as you reach idly across to her, gently stroking her silken fur as she purrs softly beside him.

That sort of suits him, too, the thick scar you left in him, you think idly, tracing one finger delicately along his torso, since his own flesh always seems several ply too thin, as if you can feel the beat of his heart, and the rush of oxygen into his lungs, and the crackle of electricity through his muscles, and the surge of blood through his arteries.

You watch his eyes flutter open, and almost pull your hand back abruptly, startled. You wait for him to push or to pull, but he just stretches lazily, drowsy and still half asleep, as you sink into the contours of his body.

His fingers trace your sternum, grazing curves that always make you shudder, and you suppress a deep moan, and remind yourself that you're not the silly, shivery type of woman who swoons over warm hands or a gravely purr or hypnotic hazel eyes, or dreams of roses or rings or being Home Maker Barbie, the type guys like him always want.

You watch his hand pull back, feel his fingers graze you in reverse, tremble again as your senses mutiny, and forcefully remind your own hands that they belong to a surgeon, and not some naïve school girl. You begin tentatively tracing the outer most edges of his scar line, almost clinically detailing where the new fibers blend into the old, as a cold shiver runs though him, and you feel the entire length of his body tense like a coiled spring.

"I still hate elevators," he whispers roughly, almost as if confessing a sin, his eyes following your fingers, and you get that this is his way of offering you your keys back, that he's giving you an out - since he's not one of those guys nothing happened to- and you can tell just by looking at him that he figured you'd be long gone by now.

You remind yourself that a guy like him never falls, period, never mind for a woman like you, and that a woman like you is much too smart to fall - period, much less for a guy like him - or to lace your fingers through his, and meet his wary eyes, until his heart stops pounding wildly, and his breathing steadies into a deep, familiar rhythm.

You're just not one of those women, you insist, like those mad French types, who'd ever notice how readily his heart beat slows with every fluid stroke along his body, or who'd remember where to linger, or who'd wrap yourself around him like a second skin – just to ward off streaming moon light or curious alarm clocks or purring black cats - or who'd ever imagine taking the stairs with him for the foreseeable future, or maybe even longer.


End file.
